My wife came home from work today and said she needs 2 laptops for work by Monday (fiscal year end stuff). They operate as a small group within a much larger corporation. Since these laptops would only be used for training sessions and the few times the go on the road, they do not want to 'buy in' to the available corporate laptop program (~$1500 per laptop and $1500 per yr licencing and IT service). Their budget is <$500 each. So, they could break both laptops every year and still be much cheaper than purchasing through the corporation. They will have to buy a Office 2010 licence for each laptop as well.

The Toshiba will have better graphics (with the Radeon), but I don't know much about those laptop cpus. What is a P6200 and how does it compare with an E-350? No idea... I'm an AMD fan, but in the past AMD meant less battery life for your laptop. Do you guys have any preferences? Other alternatives that are readily available in Canada?

I would wait for tomorrow to see the new deals for both Futureshop and Bestbuy. As for the two laptops you showed, the Acer would have better performance overall due to the faster processor and more ram. I believe the Toshiba will have better battery life due to the low power E-350; I'd guess about 5-6h without a problem.